


I'll See You On the Other Side

by ALOrated



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Afterlife, Alternate Universe - Afterlife, F/M, Fluff, Friendship, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-18
Updated: 2020-10-18
Packaged: 2021-03-09 02:41:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,076
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27077428
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ALOrated/pseuds/ALOrated
Summary: Alexander Hamilton dies, felled by a bullet in his side. After he closes his eyes for the last time in the land of the living, his opens them for the first time in the land of the dead to find his lost friends and family waiting for him.There are tears, regrets, and joy, even as his heart aches for what he lost. He reunites with old friends -- with John, Washington -- and as political enemies finally pass on, even picks up a few new ones. Who knew Jefferson could be good company? Jokes are made, peace is found, and time goes on as Alexander waits for his Eliza.Not a bad way to spend a few decades of his afterlife.
Relationships: Alexander Hamilton & John Laurens, Alexander Hamilton & Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton/Elizabeth "Eliza" Schuyler, Alexander Hamilton/John Laurens
Comments: 3
Kudos: 35





	I'll See You On the Other Side

Alexander smiled and laughed, joking all the while to hide his pain. He was weak, he knew, and getting weaker -- breaths growing more labored, darkness twisting into the edges of his vision and beckoning him into the sweet release of sleep. But he was holding Eliza’s hand, and he didn’t want to let her go. Couldn’t let go.

His fingers fell from hers, and Alexander Hamilton died soon after.

When he opened his eyes once more, he was still lying on his back, but instead of the dark rafters above lit only by flickering candlelight, he was staring up at a blank, off-white canvas of sky.

_ He was outside? _

Grass whispered at the back of his neck, and when he sat up, his hair fell loose around his shoulders -- hadn’t it been pulled back in a queue earlier? Rubbing at a sore spot on his side, he glanced around, trying to get his bearings. He was sitting in an open, grassy field, dotted with little flowers (some which Alexander recognized, little dandelions and daffodils, and others that were totally foreign) that shifted in a breeze he could just barely feel lick across his skin. The oddest part about it all, though, was that there were no structures visible. The field around him disappeared into a heavy fog, and he was unable to distinguish any people or buildings from the mist. The further out he looked into the field, the thicker the fog around him became, until it was as blank and heavy as the clouds above, all cast in an odd glow.

He pushed himself to his knees, and then to his feet, feeling the grash compress beneath his toes. He was barefoot, clothed only in some sort of loose robes of a material he couldn’t name, white and cool against his skin. His head throbbed, and he held his fingers to his temples to quell the pain, his disorientation, confusion-

And an instant later, it all came rushing back. His duel. His injury. His death.

As if by their own accord, his hands scrabbled for the cord securing his robe, pushing the fabric apart to see what  _ should _ have been a bloody wound in his side, surrounded by skin scarred from years of fights and attacks.

Instead, every scar was gone from his skin -- save for a single, light mark where he had been fatally shot and wounded. Even the marks of age were gone from his form, and he was once again fit, healthy, young. Hands shaking, he secured his robe once more, unable to stare any longer at his own body.

He swallowed thickly, forcing himself not to vomit in horror as he looked around, tears welling in his eyes. So, he’d done it. He’d died and gone to...Heaven? Some sort of afterlife, at least -- but he doubted he could truly call it “Heaven,” for he had long ago accepted that if Hell was real, that would be where he was to end up. Not...wherever “Here” was, not whenever “Now” was.

One tear slipped down his cheek, and then another, and his legs wobbled and went weak as he threw his head back and sobbed into the empty sky.

His friends. His children.

_ Eliza. _

He was gone, lost,  _ dead _ , all because of his idiocy. All because he always had to be right, always had to share his opinion, always fight for what he thought he stood for.

Eventually, his knees went weak and he fell to the ground, fingers fisted into the flower-dotted, endless grassy plain. His throat didn’t go hoarse no matter how long he cried out, and his eyes weren’t raw even after sobbing for what felt like an eternity.

He was simply existing.

Oh, how pathetic he was. One of America’s most powerful men, reduced to a weakened figure in an empty field, dressed only in a loose, open robe, having an emotional breakdown.

And at this point, he wasn’t even able to care.

* * *

Eventually, he collapsed back into the grass, and he stayed there: perhaps for hours, perhaps for days, perhaps for seconds. He couldn’t tell; the gentle light of the mist never dimmed, and he never found himself thirsty or hungry. The only real feeling he could pinpoint, besides the unimaginable flurry of emotions, was  _ exhaustion _ , and even that subsided the longer he laid staring up at the sky above.

But he was  _ Alexander Hamilton _ , and his mind rushed too fast to be put to rest for any significant period of time. The longer he laid, the worse his thoughts became, and eventually, he forced himself back onto his feet, brushed the grass from his tunic, and started walking. If there was anything else here, he’d find it, because otherwise, he’d surely go insane sitting in an empty field for all eternity. So, he walked.

And  _ walked _ .

The field was perfectly flat and fog-laden in every direction for as far as he went, and even more concerning, completely devoid of anything but soil, grass, and flowers. When he bent down to pause for a minute in his travels, he couldn’t help but notice that there were no grasshoppers jumping between blades of grass, and not a single anthill disrupted the soil.

_ At least, _ he reasoned to himself, _ I don’t have to listen to the awful buzz of mosquitoes. _

In fact, he didn’t have to listen to the awful buzz of much of  _ anything _ , considering the only noise was that which he produced, first by his own footsteps, and later, as his thoughts ran too wild, by his own mouth -- humming to a nonexistent beat, clicking his tongue to force a rhythm.

When he was very young, he recalled sitting on the docks with his older brother James, asking all sorts of questions to pass the time. It was a miracle James didn’t push him off the slatted boards into the water more, as annoying as some of his incessant questions were, but one in particular he recalled resurfaced now: “What do you think it’s like after we die?”

They both had a good concept of  _ an _ afterlife, even if neither boy had dedicated himself to a concept of just one. After all, as nice as “Heaven” sounded, Alexander had already been barred from a handful of opportunities on account of being born out of wedlock -- he didn’t want to start questioning whether or not the afterlife was the same way. But in any case, James was happy to start theorizing, if only because if one brother were to start talking, usually, the other would shut up (and James  _ desperately  _ needed a break from Alexander’s incessant chatter).

“I think it’d be like a massive, open plain,” James had mused, confident enough that Alexander hung onto every word. “Big enough for all of the world to stand there. And you would...you’d wander about, on the empty roads, and from time to time you’d pass by someone you know, to stop and chat. You’d never get hungry or tired, so sometimes you’d sit and watch the clouds for a decade, or build a house.”

“Sounds boring,” Alexander had scoffed, much preferring  _ his _ version of the afterlife, where you would wake up in your family home and continue life much like it was normally, but without worries, obligations, or problems.

Currently, it seemed like his brother was right in his vision of the afterlife, and Alexander was rather pissed about it. Squeezing his eyes shut, for a moment he could imagine he was anywhere but an endless field. Instead, he was back in his childhood home -- practically nothing, by the standards of the life he had made for himself and tried to provide for his children, but it had been everything when he was young.

His brother aside...what about his  _ mother? _ His thoughts and visions soon turned to her instead, and the old grief returned with a painful spike in his chest. She had given up so much to provide for them, never letting on how hard her life had been.

She hadn’t been there to see who Alexander had grown into. At least she hadn’t been around for his more  _ embarrassing _ teenage years, but that was hardly a drop in the bucket compared to what she had missed that he desperately wished she had been around for: him introducing her to the magnificent country he had helped found, her being present at his wedding, to meet his children, to see the life he had built.

Tears burned at the corners of his eyes, and he lifted his hands up to his face to wipe at them, eyes scrunched shut. God, if this was what eternity was like, he’d go mad before the week was up. He didn’t want nothingness with no end in sight. He wanted to be somewhere else. Anywhere else. With his friends and family lost by disease or misfortune or war.

He wanted to be back home like a young child again, his mother comforting him after he tripped and scraped his knee on the cobblestone street.

And then, he tripped.

The flowery field had been flat. It wasn’t even marked with shrubs or twigs. There was  _ nothing _ he could have tripped over, save for his own two feet, and he suspected that that wasn’t the case.

A suspicion quickly confirmed when he wiped his damp fingers on his tunic and opened his eyes.

He was back in Nevis.

He staggered back to his feet, palms and knees stinging from where he’d fallen, loose hair suddenly picked back up in a much stronger, coastal breeze than the light zephyr that had swept through the foggy field from before. Where before the grass had tickled his bare feet, the sand, mud, and thick grasses bordering the water shifted between his feet, making him shudder in discomfort.

For a few moments, he remained rooted in place, taking a deep breath and looking out at his surroundings.

Many years before, the day he had boarded the ship that would take him away to what would one day become America, he had stood out on the beaches of Nevis for what he had hoped to be the last time in his life, taking everything in. The way the sun met the ocean’s waves, the way the light filtered through the trees. The noises of the dock workers at the harbor, even the awful stench of fish. It was  _ familiar, _ and while he could only hope he would make something better for himself elsewhere -- something better than the struggle for land and rampant abuse and slavery of nevis -- he didn’t want to forget the place that had been his home for nearly the first two decades of his life.

Now, it all rushed back.

And a moment later, he broke into a run, chasing after his childhood home. Out of the corners of his eyes, he noticed other people milling about in the streets, but his gaze never lingered on them. Maybe his perspective on the afterlife had been more correct than James’ after all.

He slammed open the door to their home-

And there she was. Light, flowing hair as beautiful as it had been the day before she fell ill with her fatal sickness. A dress, but one that was airy and colorful; a summer dress fit for a wealthy woman.

He collapsed into her arms. “ _ Mother!” _

* * *

The afterlife was an odd sort of place.

For starters, time was...less of a concept. Alexander hadn’t been too far off describing whenever and wherever he was as the “Here and Now,” because that was fundamentally it. The flowery field was best described as limbo, or perhaps an in-between -- some time for the newly-dead to work through their emotions and thoughts before leaving for better places. Limbo only did so much, though, considering Alexander’s heart still weighed heavy, but he had all of eternity to work through it now. 

Where the field had been a step between life and death, the rest of the afterlife was whatever one made it.  _ That _ was the real here and now. They didn’t need to work, had no needs beyond those they wished to indulge in -- they  _ could _ eat, if they wanted to taste something new, but they didn’t have to, and so on and so forth. As such, life was more about where one wanted to live, and when. So, while in the land of the living it was 1804, the afterlife was at all times any date anyone wanted.

Time in the afterlife wasn’t a repeat of history. If Alexander wished to relive his memories, he could; if he wished to settle alone in a version of his childhood home where the streets were empty and the docks clear, he could do that too. He’d be left alone. Most people, though, settled into a decade, a place. A general state of the world snapshotted and populated by people from all times, places, walks of life. Shops were decorated and ran for the hell of it, maybe to meet people, teach a class for fun, or to distribute works of art. The world wasn’t fully separated from the land of the living -- newer decades were populated and influenced as time went on and people moved in -- and things such as new inventions, media, books, newspapers made their way into the afterlife all the time for people to find and distribute.

His mother had returned to their home in Nevis in the 1760s simply because she had wanted to. She sported the newest clothing trends from 1800, and their family home was bigger, nicer, even if it was often empty -- James apparently visited often, but lived in his own home. But she liked the island, and the other souls who had chosen to settle in the same place and time as she, so she stayed.

Alexander wasn’t sure where he wanted to settle.

The final thing that was so very different from the world he had known was the power of  _ creation _ . His mother had explained to him that the afterlife could be anything he made it, and that included having anything he wanted in the palm of his hand.

_ I can’t exactly summon my wife, _ Alexander’s bitter thoughts had supplied, but he kept that to himself, instead silencing himself and listening to what his mother had to explain. The system itself was simple -- why constrain oneself when they were nothing but a boundless spirit?

All it took was for him to will it, and his hair returned to its queue, and the light robes instead shifted into the familiar, horrendously garish waistcoat and breeches he adored so much.

He cried more than a few times that first evening, and to her credit, his mother, with her endless patience, sat him down on a daybed tucked against one of the walls and let him sob into her chest.

And even though he only needed to will his wounds away away -- that was another stipulation, that one could not hurt another unless it was consensual, that while one could trip and fall or stub their toe they would never truly be maimed -- his mother cleaned the cuts in his palms and knees like she had when he was a child.

That evening, she lit a few candles and they sat at the dining room table (to think, that his tiny childhood home was now large enough to have a dedicated dining room!) and spoke. She filled him in on the years she had spent relaxing in the afterlife, building a new space she could be happy in. She was regretful that she had been unable to stay with Alexander as he grew, but as long as she had been at peace for all those years, he was able to wipe his tears away.

Then came the hard part: recounting his own life. At the very least, as new people died and brought with them the latest news of the day, his mother was able to will herself to be in a later time, another place. She had visited New York before, and she had heard the news of Alexander’s misdeeds as they broke. He had been quite a popular man in the papers, after all.

It was as they were sipping tea and listening to the cries of the gulls outside that he jerked upright in his seat. “If you and James are here, everyone else is as well.”

That wasn’t a particularly...ground-breaking observation, he knew. But it had finally clicked what that  _ meant _ for him.

His friends from the war were here.  _ John _ was here. Washington was here.

His family was here. His  _ son _ was here.

“Alexander...” His mother sighed and reached out to rest one hand on his wrist. “I know there must be so much you wish to see and do. But, please...wait at least the night to gather your thoughts. You still need rest, in this place.”

He let out a soft huff. He wanted to run off and find his friends and other family right then and there. It wouldn’t be hard -- he’d only have to will his way to them, assuming they wished to be found. But his mother was right; while he wanted nothing more than to pull his son into a tight hug, he needed the night yet to rest and consider how he could explain everything.

And of course, there was John. He and his lover had been passionately involved, but had ended...on a sour note, to say the least. And then John had died before Alexander ever had the chance to make amends. Now, after all these years, would John even care anymore? Surely the man would have found a new distraction by now, and what could Alexander even say to him now? At least he and Washington had parted ways on a comparatively amicable note, though he was...afraid, wasn’t the best term, but it was accurate. Washington would be the one to share his disappointment, reminding Alexander how dim-witted he had been, albeit in a caring and concerned way.

He swallowed his fears, thanked his mother for seeing him, and went to sleep in the guest bedroom of her home (oh, to imagine having had such a space as a child; she truly deserved a larger home with everything she could desire in it).

No matter his other business, his son came first. He had to speak to Phillip.

**Author's Note:**

> The concept of a here and now afterlife, plus manifestation, was stolen from a book I vaguely recall reading years ago. I developed the idea of this afterlife from there just for fun a while back, and decided to write a short thing about Alexander's escapades in the afterlife. I have the next few chapters written or planned, but seeing as I'm very busy due to my class load currently, updates will be irregular. Still, enjoy!
> 
> I'll usually post updates to this story on [this account](https://beeshavethrees.tumblr.com) which is a Hamilton-specific blog! I'm always happy to respond to asks/requests/PMs there :)


End file.
